The hotel has a nice location and setting and a very nice private white sand beach with quaint tiki bar, but that is where the niceties end. The property advertises itself as a resort with on-site restaurants, fitness center, sauna, whirlpools and tennis. It also advertises spacious rooms and suites with "breathtaking views from private balconies". Do not believe everything you read.
We reserved (two months in advance) a junior suite advertised as having a queen or king bed connected to a separate sitting area via a short hallway. The sitting area is equipped with a sleeper sofa and easy chair, a working desk, TV and small refrigerator. The bedroom is equipped with a 25’ TV and access to the private balcony. What we were assigned at check-in was a standard room equipped with two double beds, a desk and TV, certainly not what we reserved and agreed to pay for. The front desk staff seems cheerful but is woefully disinterested and inattentive and tried to pass off the room they assigned us as an “upgrade” because it had a better view of the mangrove swamp outside the room. Complaints to management revealed that the hotel was very overbooked and truthfully had no junior suite available. We were instead given a “king” room, modified for wheelchair access, which included a doorbell that sounded an in-room siren and flashed a strobe light. We found this out when a prankster rang the bell at 1:00 AM.
At the “fitness center”, the sauna worked but only one of the three treadmills worked. The “whirlpool” whirled but did not heat but the adult pool area was quiet and the pool seemed well cleaned and maintained. The “resort fee” charged for each day of stay includes towels at the pools, beach, whirlpool and sauna. While plenty of towels were available at the beach, the sauna and pool had no towels and staff blamed housekeeping for not delivering clean towels to those venues.
The property advertises two on-site restaurants, cocktail lounge and beach / poolside tiki bars. While we found the settings and location to be nice, only one of the two restaurants is actually open and the menu offerings and actual food is lackluster to downright terrible. Prices are ludicrous.
Bellhop service is limited and slow. Parking is cramped and access to elevators requires climbing a half flight of stairs or navigating the lone wheelchair ramp.
The property is formerly a Starwood Resort property and has recently been acquired by LXR Resorts. The new owners are conducting a cosmetic facelift in the form of new paint and landscaping improvements. This work is being done during the day and the workers did well to avoid interfering with guests. Parking is another matter. Portions of the parking areas are occupied by storage units and construction equipment making an over-booked hotel with limited parking even more cramped.
Room furnishings are old and tired. The small refrigerator is nice but is housed in a cabinet attached to the desk. The one in our room rattled each time the compressor cycled. The TV in our room turns on to the LodgNet® screen but LodgeNet functions and movies are unavailable. Hotel management said it was due to the transition from Starwood Resorts to LXR Resorts ownership.
Overall, this property is a future no-go for us. Several other properties within the general area are much better. Try the Marina Del Mar resort instead. Numerically, we would rank this hotel 3.5 out of 10 and a poor value for your dollar.